Меланезия: География, История и Культура Океании

Subregion of Oceania

Melanesia (/UK/,/m//ɛ//l//ə/'/n//iː//z//i//ə/, /US/,/m//ɛ//l//ə/'/n//iː//ʒ//ə/) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from New Guinea in the west to the Fiji Islands in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea. It also includes the Indonesian part of New Guinea, the French oversea collectivity of New Caledonia, and the Torres Strait Islands. Almost all of the region is in the Southern Hemisphere; only a few small islands that are not politically considered part of Oceania—specifically the northwestern islands of Western New Guinea—lie in the Northern Hemisphere. The name Melanesia (in French, Mélanésie) was first used in 1832 by French navigator Jules Dumont d'Urville: he coined the terms Melanesia and Micronesia to go alongside the pre existing Polynesia to designate what he viewed as the three main ethnic and geographical regions forming the Pacific.

The name Melanesia, from Greek μέλας, black, and νῆσος, island, etymologically means "islands of black [people]", in reference to the dark skin of the inhabitants. The concept among Europeans of Melanesia as a distinct region evolved gradually over time as their expeditions mapped and explored the Pacific. Early European explorers noted the physical differences among groups of Pacific Islanders. In 1756, Charles de Brosses theorized that there was an "old black race" in the Pacific who had been conquered or defeated by the peoples of what is now called Polynesia, whom he distinguished as having lighter skin. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint Vincent and Jules Dumont d'Urville characterized Melanesians as a distinct racial group. Over time, however, Europeans increasingly viewed Melanesians as a distinct cultural, rather than racial, grouping. Scholars and other commentators disagreed on the boundaries of Melanesia, descriptions of which were therefore somewhat fluid. In the nineteenth century, Robert Henry Codrington, a British missionary, produced a series of monographs on "the Melanesians", based on his long time residence in the region. In his published works on Melanesia, including The Melanesian Languages (1885) and The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folk lore (1891), Codrington defined Melanesia as including Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and Fiji. He reasoned that the islands of New Guinea should not be included because only some of its people were Melanesians. Also, like Bory de Saint Vincent, he excluded Australia from Melanesia. It was in these works that Codrington introduced the Melanesian cultural concept of mana to the West. Uncertainty about the best way to delineate and define the region continues to this day. The scholarly consensus now includes New Guinea within Melanesia. Ann Chowning wrote in her 1977 textbook on Melanesia that there is no general agreement even among anthropologists about the geographical boundaries of Melanesia. Many apply the term only to the smaller islands, excluding New Guinea; Fiji has frequently been treated as an anomalous border region or even assigned wholly to Polynesia; and the people of the Torres Straits Islands are often simply classified as Australian aborigines. In 1998, Paul Sillitoe wrote: "It is not easy to define precisely, on geographical, cultural, biological, or any other grounds, where Melanesia ends and the neighbouring regions begins". He ultimately concludes that the region is a historical category which evolved in the nineteenth century from the discoveries made in the Pacific and has been legitimated by use and further research in the region. It covers populations that have a certain linguistic, biological and cultural affinity – a certain ill defined sameness, which shades off at its margins into difference. The author Bernard Narokobi has written that the concept of the "Melanesian Way" as a distinct cultural force could give the people of the region a sense of empowerment. This concept has in fact been used as a force in geopolitics. For instance, when the countries of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji reached a regional preferential trade agreement, they named it the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

The people of Melanesia have a distinctive ancestry. According to the Southern Dispersal theory, hominid populations from Africa dispersed along the southern edge of Asia some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. For some, the endpoint of this ancient migration was the ancient continent of Sahul, a single landmass comprising both the areas that are now Australia and New Guinea. At that time, they were united by a land bridge, because sea levels were lower than in the present day. The first migration into Sahul was over 40,000 years ago. Some migrants settled in the part that is now New Guinea, while others continued south and became the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia. Another wave of Austronesian migrants, originating ultimately from Taiwan, arrived in Melanesia much later, probably between 4000 and 3000 BC. They settled mostly along the north coast of New Guinea and on the islands to its north and east. When they arrived, they came into contact with the much more ancient indigenous Papuan speaking peoples. Some late 20th century scholars developed a theory, known as the "Polynesian theory", that there then followed a long period of interaction between these newcomers and the pre existing inhabitants that led to many complex genetic, linguistic, and cultural mixing and other changes among the descendants of all the groups. This theory was later called into question, however, by the findings of a genetic study published by Temple University in 2008. That study found that neither Polynesians nor Micronesians have much genetic relation to Melanesians. The study's results suggest that, after ancestors of the Polynesians, having developed sailing outrigger canoes, migrated out of East Asia, they moved quickly through the Melanesian area, mostly without settling there, and instead continued on to areas east of Melanesia, finally settling in those areas. The genetic evidence suggests that they left few descendants in Melanesia, and therefore probably "only intermixed to a very modest degree with the indigenous populations there". The study did find a small Austronesian genetic signature (below 20%) in some of the Melanesian groups who speak Austronesian languages, but found no such signature at all in Papuan speaking groups.

Most of the languages of Melanesia are members of the Austronesian language family or one of the numerous Papuan languages. The term "Papuan languages" refers to their geographical location rather than implying that they are linguistically related. In fact they comprise many separate language families. By one count, there are 1,319 languages in Melanesia, scattered across a small amount of land. On average, there is one language for every 716 square kilometers on the island. This is by far the densest collection of distinct languages on Earth, almost three times as dense as in Nigeria, a country famous for having a very large number of languages in a very compact area. In addition to the many indigenous Melanesian languages, pidgins and creole languages have developed from trade and cultural interaction within the area and with the wider world. Most notable among these are Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu in Papua New Guinea. They are now both considered distinct creole languages. Use of Tok Pisin is growing. It is sometimes learned as a first language, above all by multi cultural families. Examples of other Melanesian creoles are Unserdeutsch, Solomon Islands Pijin, Bislama, and Papuan Malay.

Melanesians were found to have a third archaic Homo species along with their Denisovan (3–4%) and Neanderthal (2%) ancestors in a genetic admixture with their otherwise modern Homo sapiens sapiens genomes. The frequent occurrence of blond hair among these peoples is due to a specific random mutation, different from the mutation that led to blond hair in peoples indigenous to northern regions of the globe. This is evidence that the genotype and phenotype for blond hair arose at least twice in human history.